What’s the big idea?

• Cooking is a key skill which promotes the understanding of food choice and helps children and adults to make sure they have a healthy diet.
  
• Without practical food preparation and cooking, learning about food loses its effectiveness and relevance.
  
• Food preparation is in the National Curriculum.
  
• You don't need lots of fancy equipment to get cooking.

Start from where you are! Plan activities to take account of pupils' knowledge and expertise in food preparation, their ages, abilities and the number of children involved. You also need to consider the availability of equipment, space and staffing to provide extra help in practical work. Cooking activities can be as simple as making a sandwich or a fruit salad or as involved as setting up a café or a banquet! You may already do some cooking in school. Don't just focus on biscuits and cakes. There are lots of fun and easy recipes using fruit and vegetables.

Be prepared. Try out recipes in advance. Check all the ingredients and equipment necessary are available in school and that there is adequate finance to cover the cost of food. If there isn't, how much will you need to charge each child? Ensure health and safety issues have been considered. Arrange for children to cook in small, manageable groups.

Link it into your whole school approach. For example, your class could develop and test recipes for the tuckshop or you could cook and prepare healthy packed lunch ideas and create a display promoting them.

Fruit & Veg in the Kitchen Giant fruit salad Fruity muffins Smoothies Banana sandwiches Pizza Veg soup

Offering cooking courses to parents can be a good way to involve them in Grab 5!. As part of the Grab 5! pilot project several schools took up the offer of such courses. Each course lasted for 4-5 weeks with a 2-3 hour session taking place once a week during the school day. They were lead by a community food demonstrator. The classes were designed to give parents the opportunity to discuss issues around getting their children to eat more healthily. Examples of healthy snacks were shared as well as participants' favourite recipes. Parents were able to prepare and taste lots of new dishes. In some schools it was necessary to involve the bilingual staff to help parents who didn't have English as their first language.

Many of the schools involved in the pilot project had plans to continue with cooking sessions even after the Grab 5! funding had ended. In one case there was a member of staff interested in running them and in another the group of parents were going to coordinate them themselves. Even if your school has no funding available to pay for an outside facilitator, it may be possible to run similar courses by finding some willing volunteers.

Creating things with a range of materials and knowing how to handle food safely is part of the National Curriculum within the design and technology programme of study. There are Qualifications and Curriculum Authority (QCA) Schemes of Work and linked Design and Technology Association (DATA) helpsheets to support these components.

There are also many opportunities to use cooking to give relevance to aspects of science, history, art and geography as well as to contribute to personal, social and health education and to develop key language and maths skills. See the Grab 5! Curriculum Pack for cooking activities that link to specific parts of the curriculum.

For primary school children should:

• Know that our food comes from a variety of sources.
  
• Be able to group and name foods, for example, according to their characteristics.
  
• Understand that foods contain nutrients which people need to stay alive and to maintain health.
  
• Be able to name the main nutrients and give examples of the food sources for each.
  
• Be able to apply the concept of a balanced diet to planning their own meals.
  
• Understand how colour, flavour and texture contribute to our experience and enjoyment of food.
  
• Be able to select, prepare and cook simple dishes under supervision.

[adapted from the QCA Cooking in Schools Project]

Raynville Primary School set up a healthy eating cooking club, open to Years 4, 5 and 6. It was run by the Deputy Head teacher (also the Grab 5! school co-ordinator). The club took place after school in 6 week blocks with sessions lasting 1 hour 15 minutes. Out of a total of 33 children attending the first three courses there were only two boys. To involve more boys it may be necessary to hold a boys only course. Initially the courses were free but after one term they had to charge £5 per child per 6 weeks to cover ingredient costs. The numbers dropped significantly when the charge was introduced. The co-ordinator summarises:

"It involves a big staff commitment out of school hours. However, it is a very enjoyable club to run and the children had the opportunity to try food they have not eaten before and take their products home to show their parents. Several pupils had not tasted strawberries or cranberries."

Salisbury Road Junior School linked Grab 5! to a science week activity called "super soup". Children brought in vegetables, cut them up, and then made a soup with them. From this project children learned about nutrition, the classification of fruits and vegetables and health and safety issues. Additionally, children learned to recognize the differences between solids, liquids, and gases, the changes that occur as a result of heating, and gained an understanding of reversible and not reversible changes.

Stockwell school linked a cooking activity to their growing project. Pupils had been growing fruit and vegetables at an after school club. When they were ready to be harvested they arranged for the Academy of Culinary Arts (see below for contact details) to send a couple of celebrity chefs to help the pupils prepare and cook the produce. The pupils prepared a selection of tasty dishes, which they ate themselves and shared with staff.

Pupils from St George's CE Primary School set up a mini Indian restaurant for parents and staff as a concluding project to their study of India. Five and six year olds cut up vegetables and prepared them into traditional curry dishes.

More Information Academy of Culinary Arts, Members of this association include chefs who have joined the 'Adopt a School' initiative and are available to visit local schools to talk about food and cooking and run demonstrations. For more information visit www.academyofculinaryarts.org.uk or call 020 8673 6300 Focus on Food Campaign. The three Focus on Food Cooking Buses spearhead an outreach programme which teaches 18,000 children per year in specially equipped kitchens which travel to primary and secondary schools UK-wide. Each of the bus, with two fully qualified teachers on board, train teachers to teach cooking skills. To register with Focus on Food call 01422 383191 or email focusonfood@designdimension.org. Registered schools are eligible to apply for a cooking bus visit, receive COOK SCHOOL Magazine and participate in Focus on Food Week which is the schools’ annual celebration of cooking across the UK. Food in Schools programme. A Food in Schools Toolkit is available to all schools and on www.foodinschools.org providing a wide range of guidance, resources and interactive tools to inspire and support schools in taking a whole school approach to healthy eating and drinking, The Food Partnership has also been developed as part of the programme which provides training for secondary school food technology teachers to cascade cooking skills down to primary school colleagues. The Food Standards Agency Cooking Bus aims to promote cooking skills and convey key food messages in a practical and fun way. To find out more about Cooking Bus, including checking the bus timetable and to register for a visit by the bus (for which you will need to explain how bus activity will be integrated into school work) see www.food.gov.uk/healthiereating/bus Info bank 1: Get your hands on some fruit and vegetables, info bank 5: Get food into the curriculum, info bank 6: Stay safe, info bank 9: Healthy recipes.